Instead, multiple fossils are brought together to design one creature. This means that usually one ancient animal was not the source of all the bones in a full skeleton. 'Most fossil skeletons that are put on public display in museum galleries are replicas, and replicas are often composites,' Mr Ziegler said. While museum-goers are likely accustomed to seeing full skeletons of dinosaurs and ancient Australian mammals, they're not actually what they seem. I was just there for the enjoyment'.'Īs an example of a scientist who caught the caving bug, Mr Ziegler is now the vice president of the VSA. He's put my name on papers and I thought, 'wow, I hardly did anything. Whether there's a paper released or not, whether it mentions the cavers or not, I don't think it's a big deal, although it might be for some,' Mr Revell said. 'A lot of cavers are volunteers and are just doing it for the fun of caving. Wayne Revell, the president of the VSA, said although most scientists who need their help end up catching the caving bug themselves, they do sometimes help non-caving scientists dig out, rig up, and enter caves safely. The Victorian Speleological Association (VSA) says their aim is to 'explore and chart the extensive cave systems in Victoria'. 'The impression at the time was that it would be difficult, maybe impossible, to attempt the retrieval of the rest of it,' Mr Ziegler said. The fossil was first noticed in July 2011, when a group of five recreational cavers, including Mr Van Dyk, opened a cave near Buchan in East Gippsland.Īccording to him, the area was almost completely closed off, with 'just a tiny depression and a tiny hole about the size of a 50 cent piece'.Īfter about 20 hours of digging, the team exposed an entrance that allowed the group to abseil into the cave about 10 metres down, before belly crawling through a tight U-turn crevice into the cave.Īt the time, only a small amount of the skeleton was exposed, and the remainder was under a large boulder, but the team let Museums Victoria know there was something there. In Australia, fires are quite common, so charcoal is very present in the Australian environment.'Ĭharcoal just above the kangaroo was found and dated, providing a minimum age for the specimen of 49,400 years old. In particular, with this kangaroo, it was associated with a layer of charcoal. 'But there are other ways to date things. 'We tried first to extract any collagen from the bones but we found it was quite old,' said Vladimir Levchenko, a research scientist at ANSTO who dated the specimen.

To find out the age of the specimen, the researchers sent a small sample to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to radiocarbon date the remains. The fossil of Simosthenurus occidentalis is one of the most complete found in Australia, and was extracted after more than 58 hours of caving in a two-year period. He's from a multi-generational caving family in Buchan, Victoria who have been working with palaeontologists at Museums Victoria since the 1990s to investigate caves in their local area.Īnd he's also part of a team of scientists, rangers and citizen cavers who recently uncovered a 50,000-year-old short-faced kangaroo skeleton in an undisturbed cave in East Gippsland. 'It feels comforting,' he laughs, 'I don't mind tight spots.'Īlthough that might sound terrifying, he's had plenty of experience. Joshua Van Dyk will happily abseil into a pitch black cave, or squeeze through crevices no one has ever gone into before. What's next: The fossil is going on display next month at the Melbourne Museum.Citizen cavers play a core role in collecting fossils for museum collections, which are used extensively by scientists.In short: Cavers, rangers and scientists have unearthed a near-complete specimen of a 50,000-year-old extinct short-faced kangaroo called Simosthenurus occidentalis.

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